How-To Geek

After setting up my Bambu Lab P2S last week, I set about doing what anyone does with a new toy: thoroughly testing it out. After printing the usual poop-chutes and toolboxes, I recalled something I added to my printing list roughly six months ago. I had no idea it would print so well.

Breaking into the top tier of the compact SUV segment has never been easy. Buyers in this class expect practicality, efficiency, modern technology, and strong value, which means even a complete redesign isn't always enough to shake up the established order. Any newcomer hoping to climb the rankings has to prove it can improve on a formula that's already been refined for years.

I love Jellyfin. Being able to watch my movie collection on any device in my home is great, but I usually end up watching on the main TV for the best experience. I was happy watching Jellyfin this way until a chance purchase made my setup so much better.

The biggest perk of owning a proper Wear OS smartwatch is access to the Google Play Store. Now, as a Samsung Galaxy Watch user, you've probably already installed the usual suspects—Spotify, Google Keep, Google Maps, and the like. However, that's just scratching the surface—there are plenty of great apps waiting to be discovered. Here are four apps that rarely get talked about but are so good that I always install them on my Samsung Galaxy Watch.

For years, the default storage recommendation has been to buy a NAS. Run out of space? Buy a NAS. Want better backups? Buy a NAS. Thinking about organizing your photos? Buy a NAS! Somewhere along the way, the idea that everyone needs a miniature storage server became accepted wisdom.

While viewers will indeed have a handful of new offerings to explore this month, August is heaviest on returning fan-favorite shows with new seasons across Netflix, Paramount+, HBO Max, and more.

Cordless power tools are pretty expensive, especially from big-name brands like Milwaukee. But with retail prices steadily rising and premium job-site power tool lines (like Milwaukee's M18 FUEL series) increasing in cost, more people are looking for solid alternatives.

Chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude get all the attention when it comes to the current generation of AI technology, but there are so many other genuinely useful applications of AI that involve more than telling a computer about how your day's been going.

SSDs are great for a lot of things, but long-term cold storage is not one of them, and while many never fail, some do—taking some data with them.

You usually need a Thunderbolt port to run more than one high-resolution monitor without software or other tricks, but it's now just a matter of plugging in a USB-C cable. Plugable has introduced a PC dock that allows dual 4K 60Hz monitors without drivers on Windows PCs and Chromebooks.

If you've built a Plex server from an old desktop PC, chances are you're already squeezing as much performance from it as you can. Or, at least, you might think you are.

For the last 20 years, we've heard the term "Google it" end a conversation, answer a question, or back up a bold claim. At one point, it was so popular, so second nature, that it was officially added as a verb to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary in 2006. But those days are over.

HTC is one of my all-time favorite smartphone brands. It was at the forefront of the market from the very beginning, making the very first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1. Between 2008 and 2017, HTC released a ton of marvelous Android phones—here's my selection of the 10 best the company ever made.

I've built Excel dashboards for years, and almost every one relied on some combination of XLOOKUPs, dynamic arrays, SUMIFS, helper columns, and other worksheet formulas. So I challenged myself to build a dashboard without writing a single worksheet formula, and it completely changed how I'll approach them in the future.

Setting up the perfect smart home can be a delicate balancing act. You may have some automations that work perfectly, but only if you know how to use them. When guests visit, you often need to disable a lot of your home's smart features so that your guests can actually control the lights and heating. Rather than having to set up a guest mode manually, I set up a calendar in Home Assistant to do it for me.

I love using Linux and experimenting with different Linux distributions, but I usually do so on a virtual machine, so I don't royally screw something up. It's a fun hobby, but the last thing I need is to crash and delete my entire system (again). Beyond that, there's just something fun and satisfying about trying out a new OS, customizing it, and using it. With so many different Linux distros out there, there are bound to be a few that require more technical knowledge and expertise than others.

Paramount+ subscribers in the U.S. have a lot to look forward to right now. Zoe Saldaña is back running black ops in a new season of Taylor Sheridan's highly anticipated series Lioness, there are a handful of UFC bouts to tap out with, and 71 movies were added in its big August 1 dump alone.

On October 14th, 1947, U.S. Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager pushed the Bell X-1 past the speed of sound over the California desert, becoming the first pilot in history to fly faster than Mach 1. Less than two decades later, Lockheed's Skunk Works division answered with the SR-71, a reconnaissance plane built to cruise at more than three times the speed of sound.

August on Netflix has arrived, and with it comes the anticipation for a handful of marquee new original movies the streamer will be trotting out in the coming weeks, including a sci-fi horror starring Greta Lee (The Last House) and, late in the month, a chilling-looking murder thriller (The Whisper Man) starring Adam Scott and Robert de Niro.

Your work laptop might be sharing a network with everything else you own (provided you work from home sometimes, that is). That's convenient, but it also gives a computer controlled by someone else's IT department far more local access than it needs.